View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by WestminsterResearch WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch (l) as a sociolinguistic variable in Francoprovençal Kasstan, J. and Müller, D. This is a copy of the final version of an article published in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 249, pp. 99-118. It is available from the publisher at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2017-0039 The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] IJSL 2018; 249: 99–118 Jonathan Kasstan* and Daniela Müller (l) as a sociolinguistic variable in Francoprovençal https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2017-0039 Abstract: This article argues for (l) as a sociolinguistic variable in Francoprovençal: (l) refers to variable palatalisation of /l/ in obstruent + lateral onset clusters (/kl, ɡl, pl, bl, fl/), a feature that has long been the subject of metalinguistic commentary, but no systematic analysis. Our data, which come from a larger study of Francoprovençal (FP), show significant intraspeaker variation. Sociolinguistic inter- views were carried out in the Lyonnais region of France among 21 FP speakers with different acquisition routes. /l/-palatalisation is far from categorical in our sample, with increased rates of the French variant [l] over the traditional [j] variant. We interpret these data as contact-induced change: phonological leveling is underway, with convergence towards French. These findings are consistent with the language death literature, and are now widely reported in the context of other minority varieties spoken in the Hexagon. Conversely, some new speakers show different patterns with a greater range of palatalised variants. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that suggest laterals to be a locus for socio-indexical cues cross- linguistically. Keywords: Francoprovençal, variation and change, language obsolescence, palatalisation, new speakers 1 Introduction ForsometimenowFrance’s regional minority languages have been losing ground to French, which remains the only official language of the state. Today, most linguistic commentators would agree that these languages are at best vulnerable, and at worst obsolescent, with very few, if any, remaining mono- lingual speakers. In most cases this situation has resulted from gradual lan- guage shift rather than maintenance of stable diglossia. Campbell and Muntzel suggest that a long-term shift can lead to what they term “gradual death” *Corresponding author: Jonathan Kasstan, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK, E-mail: [email protected] Daniela Müller, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 80539 München, Germany, E-mail: [email protected] Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/9/17 9:54 AM 100 Jonathan Kasstan and Daniela Müller (1989: 184–185), defined as the process in which a minority language is lost in a long-term contact situation with a dominant language. This process is char- acterised by the levelling of highly localised linguistic features, intermediate stages of bilingualism, and an identifiable proficiency continuum of speakers (Dorian 1981). However, while these outcomes might occur in an unstable contact situation between dominant and minority languages, in environments with language planning strategies favouring revival and revitalisation, and where so-called new speakers emerge, language change of quite a different kind is also possible. These adult learners, “with little or no home exposure to a minority language but who instead acquire it through […] education pro- grams [or] revitalization projects (O’Rourke et al. 2015: 1), have been documen- ted cross-linguistically as exhibiting common characteristics. For example, new speakers are now well-documented in the context of Breton. While tradi- tional speaker numbers have been dwindling for some time, attempts to revitalise the traditional dialects have led to the development of a learner variety – néo-Breton – which is only reified by new speakers. These so-called néo-Bretonnants (Jones 1995) are characteristically middle-class, urban-dwell- ing, well-educated and highly politicised. In contrast to native speakers, new speakers typically acquire the minority variety as an academic exercise in an educational setting. As a result they speak a standardised, pan-regional variety of Breton, which in some cases is reported to be incomprehensible to native speakers (Jones 1998). The level of linguistic insecurity felt by these types of speaker can therefore be acute when contact between the two occurs (see Kasstan 2017). The phenomenon of the new speaker as an emerging and important social actor in the continuum of speaker proficiency is of central interest to this article, which examines the changing sociolinguistic context of obsolescent Francoprovençal (FP).1 In presenting results from sociolinguistic interviews conducted in 2012, and comparing these data with historical evidence from the Atlas linguistique de la France (Gilliéron and Edmont 1902–1910) (ALF) and the Atlas linguistique et ethnographique du Lyonnais (Gardette 1950–1956) (ALLy), this article will argue that localised traditional forms are undergoing phonolo- gical levelling in the direction of Standard French (SF). Conversely, while emer- ging new speakers of FP broadly show the same patterns in casual speech, they 1 Unlike Breton, FP’s status as a clearly demarcated linguistic system is long contested, with some viewing FP instead as a transitional zone between Oïl French and Occitan (see Kasstan and Nagy, this issue). However, given its high degree of internal variability, it seems appro- priate to view FP as a group of varieties with common features. Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/9/17 9:54 AM (l) as a sociolinguistic variable 101 can in some contexts produce variants that convey social work. In Section 7, we invoke the notion of indexicality (Silverstein 2003) to link the selection of such variants on the one hand with the sociolinguistic salience of the dependent variable, and, on the other, with affiliation to a new-speaker revitalisation movement in the wider region. We begin with an overview of studies that have explored the sociolinguistic salience attached to laterals, before discussing /l/-palatalisation in FP. Thereafter we characterise FP in the Lyonnais area. Following an introduction to this region, and the methodology operationalised to collect and analyse the data, we discuss the findings and suggest avenues for further research. 2 Laterals as a sociolinguistic variable Sub-phonemic variation of lateral consonants has been found to be a locus for socio-indexical cues in several languages, but few studies have systematically investigated the phenomenon. The most thorough of these is Christen’s(1988) investigation of the Western Swiss German dialect spoken in the city of Lucerneandintheneighbouringcountryside. In Western Swiss German, the lateral, especially in pre-consonantal and word-final position, is generally dark and even vocalised in many rural varieties. In her study of the socio- indexical meanings of this variant in Lucerne and the small village of Knutwil, situated 25 kilometres from Lucerne, Christen (1988) was able to show negative judgments connected with the vocalised lateral for the urban population, whereas positive values were attached to this variant by the rural village- dwellers. This evaluation hinged on the evaluation of country life itself – whether it was seen as desirable or backward. Within the village community, however, Christen (1988: 158) showed that wives evaluated the non-vocalised lateral as more prestigious. She also showed that female participants produced fewer vocalised variants than their respective husbands – craftsmen and farm- ers – who attached values of rural identity to their vocalised laterals and used them pervasively in almost all social settings. As attitudes toward dialects evolved positively in Switzerland from the end of the 1980s, the use of voca- lised variants of /l/ spread into dialectal regions which historically never had them (Christen 2001: 24). Christen thus interprets /l/-vocalisation as a socio- phonetic cue which indexes local identity and speaker authenticity. More recently, Leeman et al. have shown that /l/-vocalisation has spread southward to major urban centres like Bern from the rural hinterlands; age appears to be a significant factor in these findings, with older speakers tending to vocalise Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 12/9/17 9:54 AM 102 Jonathan Kasstan and Daniela Müller more than younger speakers (2014: 214). The lateral as a socio-indexical carrier has also been discussed in the context of Catalan and Spanish in Catalonia (Simonet 2010); Polish in the first half of the twentieth century, when the dark lateral was still in the process of vocalising towards /w/ (Straka 1942); some varieties of American English, as well as Bristol English, where the use of an